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16 AFLOAT.com.au July 2016
CRUISING
That monstrous thing, sibling rivalry, reared its ugly ahead
amid the majestic Scottish Highlands, recalls Kevin Green*.
LOCH NESS
The competition began before we’d
even got on the water, with my little
sister racing up from the south of
Scotland and me hastily driving along
the twisty Highland roads to reach the
Inverness base of our charter yachts. Sister
won that race, so when father-in-law Jimmy
and I arrived we were told our boat was
the Leisure 23 appropriately named Ben
Nevis, rather than the newer looking Virago
Voyager Strathpeffer. Hmm.
The next blow was the crew allocation
and mine would be a mixed and hairy bag:
Hamish the border collie that sister had
rescued from a failed sheepdog pound,
father-in-law Jimmy and brother-in-law
Colin. None had sailed yachts before,
which is understandable if you happened
to be a border collie with learning
difficulties. Our rival crew had my brother,
sister and friend Mark; who’d all done a
bit of sailing.
Our plan for the trip was to spend a
week’s return voyage along the 100km
length of the Caledonian Canal. If the
August weather and prevailing winds
permitted we’d make our way through Loch
Ness, Loch Oich and finally Loch Lochy
(beside Fort William and near the shadow
of Britain’s highest mountain, Ben Nevis).
Our Skipper’s Guide to the Canal
advised that 29 locks and 10 swing bridges
lay before us. It would also be busy because
it’s an important route for commercial
vessels avoiding my home waters of the
stormy Pentland Firth in the far north.
CASTLES AND KINGS
These long, deep lochs run along a
geological fault known as the Great Glen
that divide Scotland in half with the
Highlands to the north and
the Lowlands to the
The prevailing wind is from the south west on Loch Ness but on
a return trip you’ll enjoy both running and going to windward.
PhotoScottishCanals/JohnGMoore